Jays

In Bruno Liljefors painting of jays, for a second one meets a bird's gaze just before it lifts to accompany its friend over the fields. This is a frozen moment. Just as in a photograph of nature with the focus on the bird, the background is somewhat diffuse and sketchy. The beautiful and almost decorative twig that the bird is sitting on is placed to the left of the picture rather than centrally in the middle. The whole composition is asymmetrical and there is strong contrast between foreground and background. Liljefors borrowed inspiration to the somewhat unusual composition in Japanese woodcuts. Characteristic of these prints is the daring use of the surface, the absence of depth and the stylization they employ. But Liljefors never became as completely decorative and stylized in his painting as the Japanese. Rather, he created a synthesis of Japanese perspective and composition and his own realism.